The great theological challenge of the problem of suffering in ethical monotheism has been described as a “trilemma,” namely reconciling the reality of human suffering with the beliefs that,

God is all-Good (omnibenevolent).

God is all-Powerful (omnipotent).

God is all-Knowing (omniscient).[1]

The term “Theodicy” (from Greek theos, God, and dike, Justice) was coined to describe the philosophical enterprise of justifying or defending God and, more broadly, for attempts to grapple with the theological and existential problem of human suffering. The Bible contains many texts that grapple directly or indirectly with theodicy.

Retributive Theodicy

The second word of Parashat Ekev, after which it is named, denotes “consequence.” The parashah opens with a strong claim for “retributive justice,” the idea that God rewards good behavior and punishes wrong-doing. Indeed, this conception underpins the structure of the parashah as a whole.

8:19 If you do forget Yhwh your God and follow other gods to serve them or bow down to them, I warn you this day that you shall certainly perish; 8:20 like the nations that Yhwh will cause to perish before you, so shall you perish—as a consequence(עקב) of your not heeding Yhwh your God. (NJPS with adjustments)

The retributive theory of theodicy is also the basic explanation offered both in the book of Deuteronomy and the book of Leviticus for Israel’s eventual exile from the land (Deut 28-29, 32; Lev 26). Thus, one of the Hebrew Bible’s main approaches to theodicy presumes some sort of consequential system of divine justice.[2]

This approach is applicable for both individuals (especially in the Psalms and Wisdom Literature), and nations. It is fundamental to the covenantal framework of the Exodus and Wilderness narratives in Torah and the historical narratives of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. Similarly, the primary message of the prophets is that Israel’s well-being as a nation is dependent upon its conduct.

Examination Theodicy: Divine Testing (נסה)

Elsewhere, the Bible follows a belief that may be characterized as examination theodicy, the idea that God wishes to see what the sufferer will do in order to reward the sufferer if he/she/they “pass” the test. The most famous examples of examination theodicy are in the stories of the binding of Isaac and the book of Job.

Binding of Isaac
The beginning and end of the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22 use “testing” language:

22:12 And he said, “Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from Me.”… 22:17 I will bestow My blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore; and your descendants shall seize the gates of their foes. 22:18 All the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your descendants, as a consequence (עקב) of your having obeyed My command.”

Here the relationship between the language of consequence and the suffering is inverted. Because Abraham submitted to suffering, he will be rewarded as a consequence. This is the only explicit case of Abraham undergoing a trial in the Torah, but it serves as the basis for the well-known tradition about the ten trials of Abraham, found already in the Second Temple book of Jubilees (17:15-18; 19:8).

Job
A similar understanding is implied in the narrative framework of the book of Job.[3] Although the term נסה itself is not used in Job chs. 1-2 and 42, the cause of Job´s tragic suffering is ascribed to instigation by “the satan”,[4] who hoped to demonstrate that Job would fail to maintain righteousness in the face of trying circumstances.[5] God appears to allow the satan to inflict terrible suffering on Job to “prove” to the satan that Job would not sin even under these harrowing circumstances. In the end, God rewards Job for his fidelity and grants him wealth, more children, and long life.

God’s Lack of Omniscience
Implicit in the stories of Job and the binding of Isaac is the belief that God is not omniscient, and does not know the outcome of the test in advance.[6] Jacob Licht has argued the case that these episodes should be taken at face value—they presume that divine knowledge is less than complete, and that God must engage in experimentation to acquire further data about human beings’ character and behavior.[7] The responses of human beings to divinely inflicted trials and ordeals provide God with such evidence, and God can then punish or reward them based on their behavior.

Which Theodicy Best Explains
the Wilderness Wandering?

These two theories of theodicy are not mutually exclusive. (God can both punish sinners and test believers.) But how might these abstract theories be used to help explain Israel’s history as recorded in the biblical text? The punishment of the generation of the wilderness provides an excellent test case.

Retributive Theodicy (Numbers)
Numbers offers the retributive theodicy as the explanation for the Israelites’ forty years of wandering in the wilderness:

14:33 Your children roam the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your faithlessness, until the last of your carcasses is down in the wilderness. 14:34 You shall bear your punishment for forty years, corresponding to the number of days — forty days — that you scouted the land: a year for each day. Thus you shall know what it means to thwart Me.

In this model, the wandering is a direct punishment for the sin of the scouts, and the Israelites’ complicity in that sin by refusing to go up the land.

8:2 Remember the long way that Yhwh your God has made you travel in the wilderness these past forty years, that He might test you by hardships to learn what was in your hearts: whether you would keep His commandments or not.

8:14 Beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget Yhwh your God— who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; 8:15 who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its seraph serpents and scorpions, a parched land with no water in it, who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock; 8:16 who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers had never known, in order to test you by hardships only to benefit you in the end.

Educative Theodicy: Testing as Purification
But is that what Deuteronomy really means? This understanding of theodicy as divine testing (examination) works well with Deut 8:2, which ends with “whether you would keep His commandments or not.” Whereas Deut 8:16, which concludes with “to benefit you in the end,” suggests that the wilderness wandering and afflication had a purpose beyond just to test the people’s loyalty.

The key to understanding verse 16 may be found in the ambiguity of the word נ-ס-ה, which does not only mean “to test.” Like its synonymous biblical Hebrew root ב-ח-נ, it also originated as a term denoting the refining of metals. For example, both roots appear as a parallel to the root צ-ר-פ (smelting) in Psalms (26:2), another word for smelting:

Similar semantic overlap between purification and examining underlies the English “test,” derived from the Latin “testum,” an earthern vessel used in metallurgical processes.[8] An extension of the metaphor supposes that “ordeals” can be edifying, and “trials and tribulations” (the latter word comes from the Latin for “pressure”) can contribute to growth.

Thus, in Deut 8:16, the statement about God afflicting and “נ-ס-ה-ing” of Israel for the nation’s benefit may indicate a process of improvement through overcoming difficult experiences. The pairing with “affliction” in לְמַ֣עַן עַנֹּֽתְךָ֗ וּלְמַ֙עַן֙ נַסֹּתֶ֔ךָ points to a sense of, “no pain, no gain.”[9] This verse indicates that the purpose of the wilderness wanderings was to strengthen the nation and prepare the children of Israel for settlement in the Promised Land.[10] It may thus be unconnected to the issue of divine omniscience.

Vicarious Educative Theodicy
Educative theodicy is sometimes extended pedagogically. If sufferers are toughened by their difficult experiences, others can learn similar lessons vicariously through narratives about the suffering, and about retributive justice. The wilderness wandering functions this way, as a paradigm for later instances of Israelite sin and punishment, and a cautionary tale.[11] So, for example in Psalm 95 (8-10):

Do not be stubborn as at Meribah, as on the day of Massah, in the wilderness, when your fathers put Me to the test, tried Me, though they had seen My deeds. Forty years I was provoked by that generation (Ps 95: 8-10).

Thus, even if the wandering is understood as retributive justice, it also functions as a kind of education for the future.

נסה as Retribution,
Examination, and Education

Jacob Licht, in Testing in the Hebrew Scriptures and in Post-Biblical Judaism, suggested that biblical texts sometimes invoke the idea of divine testing as a sort of last resort to resolve greater theological difficulties. He shows that the book of Judges offers multiple explanations for why God left nations in the Land, requiring the Israelites to engage in conquest warfare:

2:20 Then Yhwh became incensed against Israel, and He said, “Since that nation has transgressed the covenant that I enjoined upon their fathers and has not obeyed Me, 2:21 I for My part will no longer drive out before them any of the nations that Joshua left when he died.”

2:22For it was in order to test Israel by them — [to see] whether or not they would faithfully walk in the ways of the Yhwh, as their fathers had done — 2:23 that Yhwh had left those nations, instead of driving them out at once, and had not delivered them into the hands of Joshua.

3:1 These are the nations that Yhwh left so that He might test by them all the Israelites who had not known any of the wars of Canaan, 3:2 so that succeeding generations of Israelites might be made to experience war…

3:4These served as a means of testing Israel, to learn whether they would obey the commandments which Yhwh had enjoined upon their fathers through Moses.

The two passages in Judges each initially explain the nations that remained as a form of retribution or education, but supplement this explanation with a second, namely, examination (testing) theodicy. Licht suggests that the multiplicity of explanations hints at their inadequacy. Moreover, he argues, the “testing” motif is introduced, even though it is theologically unsatisfying, because it is a way of deflecting the greater theological question of why God subjected Israel to the hardship of the conquest.

A Place for Mercy in Theodicy
In the continuation of the passage in Judges 3, we learn that the nation actually fails the test and receives punishment (retributive theodicy), but the story doesn’t end there:

3:9 The Israelites cried out to Yhwh, and Yhwh raised a champion for the Israelites to deliver them…

Here we see a hint of an additional feature of biblical theodicy, in which divine justice is complemented by mercy.

Conclusion

The strong voice of retributive theodicy in this parashah is consistent with the great rebuke in Deut 28, though that latter chapter concentrates on punishments, while ours concentrates on rewards. But the carrot of Deuteronomy 7-8 and the stick of Deuteronomy 28 complement each other. Significantly, they both emphasize that the land is not a permanent gift, but, as noted in the first gloss of Rashi to the Torah, is given at God’s pleasure, and residing in the land is a privilege, not an absolute right. Dwelling securely in the land is a privilege that Moses exhorts the people to earn, and that can be regained even after stumbling.

___________________

Dr. Shani Tzoref is currently Professor of Bible and Biblical Exegesis at the Abraham Geiger Rabbinical College and the School of Jewish Theology at the University of Potsdam, and a Fellow at the Qumran Institute of the University of Göttingen. Her research and publications, including her book on the exegetical analysis of Pesher Nahum, focus primarily upon early biblical interpretation, especially the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dr. Tzoref’s academic awards include a Fulbright Fellowship (1994), and a Rothschild Fellowship (2006) at Hebrew University.

08/04/2015

[1] This is the formulation of R.M. Green, “Theodicy,” in M. Eliade (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Religion, 430-41. It is useful, but should not be taken too literally. The stance of the Hebrew Bible may be debated for each of these elements. For example, most Bible scholars today would say that many biblical texts presume the existence of other gods, distinguishing between henotheism, monolatry, and monotheism. Moreover, some texts seem to indicate an understanding that God’s knowledge and power are subject to limitations. And, significantly, the philosophical difficulty is not confined to the question of human suffering, but applies also to human sin: how can there be any badness in a world governed by an all-powerful benevolent Deity?

[2] A. Laato and J.C. de Moor provide a thorough survey of the problem and biblical perspectives in their Theodicy in the World of the Hebrew Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2003). In their “Introduction,” pp. vii-liv, they survey categories suggested in earlier scholarship. I tend to think of the various types of approaches not as solutions, but as “strategies” or “coping mechanisms.”

[3] In many biblical Wisdom texts, the authors do not question the justice of suffering, but rather its absence: they are troubled by the flourishing of the wicked, especially in contrast to the suffering of the righteous.

[4] In Job, he is always called “the satan,” with a definite article (“the”), meaning “the adversary.” Since definite articles may not appear before personal names, this may not be translated as “Satan.”

[5] Compare the role of Mastema in the account of the Binding of Isaac in Jubilees 17:16 and parallel midrashic traditions concerning “accusing angels” in b. San. 89b and Gen. Rab. 55:4 (ed. Theodor-Albeck, 587). For a discussion of additional Second Temple and rabbinic sources, see James L. Kugel, The Bible as it Was (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 171-172; Traditions of the Bible (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), 301-302; Moshe J. Bernstein, “Angels at the Akedah: A Study in the Development of a Midrashic Motif,” in Reading and Re-Reading Scripture at Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 323-351.

[8] The etymological origins in metallurgy are also relevant for the meaning of testing in the sense of a process to determine the nature of a substance, since one use of the testum was to smelt a portion of metal in order to evaluate its purity.

[9] The JPS collapses the two Hebrew verbs in the purpose clauses, עַנֹּֽתְךָ֗, נַסֹּתֶ֔ךָ, into a single verb “to test”.

[10] There is some tension among biblical assessments of the manna. On one hand, it represents divine providence, nurturing Israel and sustaining the nation in the wilderness. On the other hand, it is depicted as a strangely foreign substance (Deut 8:3). Deut 8:16 is ambiguous. The purpose clause “in order to afflict and to test” may refer to the giving of the manna, the final participial clause in the series, or it may refer to the entire series begun in verse 15 with the Exodus.

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